By: Téa Tamburo
I watched the clock change to midnight. It’s now Nov. 29, and my 20th birthday is officially over. Now, it’s the 20th anniversary of my Finding Day — the day I was found outside the gates of the Yiyang Social Welfare Institute.
I know that as I get older and my Finding Day becomes longer ago, the chance of connecting with my biological family declines. When searching for biological families, the most direct search methods are completing DNA testing and hiring private investigators. DNA testing sites like 23&Me, Ancestry DNA, and GedMatch mitigate the barriers caused by the possibility of families relocating, passing away, or giving up searching for their babies. However, time is a crucial factor in the success of a private investigator or in-person search.
Regardless of whether I want to connect with my biological family, each year it would become more and more difficult should I wish to search seriously. This, coupled with the fact that my orphanage no longer functions as it once did and that China’s international adoption program has since closed, serves as a poignant reminder of how much could have changed for my biological family in the two decades between my finding day and now.
One-Day-Old Me doesn’t remember my finding day, and, at times, reflecting on my finding and adoption feels more like a story I’ve been told rather than a part of my own lived experience. Yet, I can’t help but wonder about the hours between my birth and my arrival at the orphanage and what my birth family was like on the day I was there.